Arora strode down the quiet hospital corridor, her coat brushing softly against her boots as the pale overhead lights flickered in rhythmic hums. She didn't see Jack anywhere—but that didn't matter right now. All she could see was her brother lying pale and motionless on the examination bed. Her chest tightened with an unbearable weight.
Kelvin. The only family she had left.
She stepped closer, staring down at him for a long, silent moment. His face was peaceful—far too peaceful—like someone pretending to sleep through a rising storm.
Looking at his still frame brought the nightmare of her past crashing back into her mind. It wasn't just a distant memory; it was a wound that had never stopped bleeding. She had been just a five-year-old child, tiny enough to hide behind her mother's skirts, yet old enough to remember every terrifying sound, every smell, every scream.
It had happened right before her eyes.
Her father hadn't run that night. He hadn't even flinched. Theo Winland had stood tall in front of Claire, his broad shoulders squared like a wall of solid steel, trying to be an unbreakable shield for his family. But he had forgotten one crucial detail: he was human.
The woman in the burgundy dress hadn't hesitated. Her gloved finger had squeezed the trigger, and the deafening crack of gunfire had shattered the night like thunder. Arora had frozen in horror as the sharp smell of gunpowder and blood filled the room, heavy and hot. Her father fell forward, his eyes still open, a dark crimson bloom spreading rapidly across his shirt.
Arora's scream had torn through the house, but the assassin's gun was already swinging toward her mother.
Claire Winland didn't step back. She stepped forward, her voice shaking with fierce, maternal fury. "You want us?" she had shouted, her chin raised high. "Then leave my children alone! You know what will happen if you touch them!"
Even with her husband lying motionless at her feet, Claire Winland stood proud—beautiful, unyielding, and defiant, a solitary rose among ash.
Arora and Kelvin had clung to each other, weeping so loudly that their sobs echoed off the wooden walls. "Dad!" Arora had sobbed, trying to crawl toward her father's still body, but Claire's arm shot out, holding her back with desperate strength.
"Kelvin, take your sister inside," Claire had commanded, her voice steady even as tears glistened in her eyes.
Kelvin obeyed, though his ten-year-old hands trembled violently. He dragged five-year-old Arora back into the house, both of them slipping on the slick floor until they scrambled beneath the dining table. They crouched in the shadows, knees pressed tight against their chests, the sound of their frantic breathing filling the dark space.
Then—Bang.
A second gunshot ripped through the night air.
Arora gasped, clamping her hands over her ears. Kelvin wrapped his arms tightly around her, pulling her small body into his chest as the terrifying echoes faded. For two agonizing minutes, neither of them moved. They didn't even dare to breathe.
Then came the harsh screech of tires outside—a car speeding away into the dark downpour, leaving only the sound of falling rain.
Kelvin crawled out first, his small hands shaking as he gripped the edge of the wooden table. "Stay here," he whispered in a raspy voice. But five-year-old Arora scrambled out right behind him anyway.
They ran outside together into the yard. The front lawn was completely empty. No bodies. No blood. Only the lingering scent of gunpowder burning in the damp air, and a single red petal torn from their mother's dress lying in the mud. Their world had ended in a single night, yet the sky above remained quiet and calm, as if nothing had happened at all.
That was the night Arora learned what absolute silence really sounded like.
Sinking back into the present, Arora's eyes snapped open. "Nurse!"
Her voice cut through the quiet room like a blade. A floor nurse stumbled through the door, her eyes wide with alarm.
"I want you to find the best neurological specialist in the country," Arora ordered, her voice cold and unyielding. "I want to know exactly what is happening to him. No delays, no excuses."
Before the nurse could even gather herself to respond, Arora pulled her phone from her coat pocket, her thumb tapping a familiar contact.
"Hello?" came Edwin's rough voice over the line, muffled by background movement.
"Get to the hospital," she commanded flatly. "I want you standing guard right outside Kelvin's room."
"Leader? What about tomorrow's district mission—"
"I said come, Edwin. Since when do you ask questions about my orders?"
A brief pause followed over the line, succeeded by a heavy sigh. "Yes, Leader. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
Arora ended the call and stood beside her brother's bed, gently brushing a lock of hair from his forehead. "Wake up soon," she whispered softly to the silent room. "I'll be right here."
Her hand trembled slightly as her fingers touched his cool cheek. Guilt and cold fury burned inside her chest like oil meeting fire. She turned away and dialed another number.
The line clicked open immediately. "Nick."
"Hello, Nick. I want you to gather every captain and squad member at headquarters in one hour. No exceptions. Anyone who disobeys will have their position revoked—and losing their rank won't be the worst thing that happens to them."
Nick froze on the other end of the line. Normally, he would have made a sarcastic remark or teased her about her temper. But not tonight.
He still remembered the night two years ago when she earned her title. He remembered the night she walked alone into a warehouse filled with thirty armed traitors and walked out an hour later, leaving every single one of them broken on the floor. After that night, nobody in Chicago ever questioned her authority again. The entire underworld had bent its knee to the woman they called the Black Rose.
"Yes, Leader," Nick replied instantly, his tone tight with intense respect—and caution.
Fifteen minutes later, Edwin burst through the consultation room doors, slightly out of breath. "Leader! I'm here."
Arora didn't turn around immediately. She was adjusting Kelvin's blanket, smoothing it over his shoulder as if fabric could shield him from the world. When she finally turned to face Edwin, the icy armor around her eyes cracked for a brief second.
"Call me the second his condition changes," she said quietly. "And make sure the medical team checks his vitals every hour."
"Yes, Leader," Edwin said softly. Then a flicker of guilt crossed his face. "I'm sorry... We couldn't notify you about Kelvin's condition sooner because of the strict protocol you put in place before leaving six months ago."
The words hung heavy in the air. That protocol—total radio silence regarding personal matters while on high-stakes missions—had been her own iron rule. She had created it to remain cold, focused, and ruthless. And now, that very rule had kept her blind while the only person she cared about suffered.
Arora clenched her fists so tightly her nails bit into her palms. "We will discuss that later," she said, her voice strained with restrained emotion.
She glanced down at Kelvin one last time, a small memory surging past her defenses. She had been four years old, burning with a fever that wouldn't break. Their mother had sat beside her bed with cold cloths, but nine-year-old Kelvin had refused to leave the room. He had stayed awake beside her all night long, monitoring her breathing and feeding her water every time she woke up crying.
Arora blinked the memory away, straightening her spine as the cold anger took hold once more. "Guard him with your life, Edwin. I'll be back."
At the central reception desk, Arora stopped abruptly. The floor nurse behind the counter flinched as her shadow fell across the polished surface.
"Did you see the blond man who came in with us earlier?" Arora asked, her voice calm but razor-sharp.
The nurse nodded nervously. "Y-Yes, ma'am. He asked for directions to the nearby late-night markets a little while ago... said he wanted to buy something to eat."
Arora frowned. Food? Past four in the morning in the middle of a torrential downpour?
She gave a curt nod and turned toward the exit, her heels echoing against the floor. Maybe he really had gone to find an open market. But Arora had survived two years at the head of a syndicate by never ignoring convenient coincidences.
She pushed open the heavy side exit, the cold rain instantly striking her face in fine, icy needles. The narrow alley behind St. Gabriel Medical Center stretched into the gloom, a single flickering streetlight casting long shadows across the wet asphalt.
That was when she spotted him—a familiar figure standing near the far end of the alley beneath the yellow glow, his golden hair glinting in the rain. He had his back half-turned, a device pressed tightly to his ear as he spoke in low, controlled tones.
Arora slowed her pace, her tactical senses flaring to absolute alert. She couldn't hear the words over the sound of the rain, but she could read the rigid tension in his shoulders—the subtle, calculating stance of a man who was definitely not buying food.
She stepped closer, her boots splashing quietly through the puddles. "Jack?"
Jack froze instantly.
He spun around, quickly shoving the device deep into his coat pocket while forcing a shaky smile onto his face. "A-Arora?"
Arora's eyes narrowed into dark slits. "Since when do you carry a phone, Jack?"
Her voice remained deceptively smooth, but her gaze cut straight through his relaxed act.
Jack swallowed hard, gesturing sheepishly toward his pocket. "Uh... Edwin gave it to me! It's just one of those old Black Rose burner bricks from HQ. You know, the stripped-down units without cellular chips or network capability? I begged him for one because I was dying of boredom back at the suite, so he gave me an air-gapped unit just to listen to offline music."
He forced an innocent grin, but Arora stepped closer, stopping right in front of him. She tilted her head, watching the faint glow of his screen fade to black inside his coat.
"An air-gapped music player," she repeated softly, her voice dropping an octave. "And who were you talking to on an air-gapped device at four in the morning in the pouring rain?"
Jack tried to offer his usual carefree laugh, but the sound died in his throat under her unyielding stare. "I... I was just humming along to a track, Baby. Singing in the rain, you know?"
Arora held his gaze for three long, agonizing seconds. She knew Black Rose's security protocol inside and out—those burner units had their cellular components completely gutted to prevent tracking or hacking. Edwin believed it was physically impossible to send or receive calls on them. Which meant if Jack had just been talking into one, he was either delusional... or he possessed the technical capability to rebuild a gutted firmware system under their noses.
"Let's go," she said finally, turning back toward the street without another word. "Kelvin needs us."
Jack nodded quickly, falling into step right behind her. But as Arora walked ahead into the rain, her mind filed away every single detail of the encounter. And behind her, Jack's hand stayed clenched tight in his pocket, praying she hadn't caught a glimpse of the encrypted corporate comms channel still actively running on his re-engineered device.
To Be Continued...